• New feature demonstrates versatility of Sumitomo Rubber Industries' SENSING CORE safety technology

•One OEM customer already confirmed for 2024

Sumitomo Rubber Industries (SRI), the maker of Falken Tyres, continues to develop its SENSING CORE intelligent tyre technology with a new wheel detachment function set to reach production vehicles for the first time this year. SENSING CORE is a flexible, sensor-less analysis and monitoring system with many different applications, including tyre pressure and wear, uneven loads and hazardous road conditions.

In recent years, accidents and injuries caused by detached wheels have become headline news in markets such as Japan, especially during the winter season, when car and truck drivers switch over to winter tyres and may not tighten the wheel nuts sufficiently. Whilst many commercial vehicle operators use mechanical clips on the nuts as a visual check, they are not 100 percent reliable and rely on the diligence of the driver to check each of them before each journey.

Like previously developed 'pillars' of SENSING CORE, the wheel detachment function works independently of tyre make, model or size. It analyses wheel-speed signals and other information from the vehicle's controller area network (CAN) to detect whether any wheel nuts are loose – by as little as one millimetre.

SENSING CORE grew out of SRI's original deflation warning system (DWS), an indirect tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS). Fifteen OEMs from Europe, Japan, China and India fit its DWS to their cars. Now SENSING CORE is the centrepiece of the peripheral services SRI is developing to meet the future challenges of CASE vehicles and mobility as a service, under the SMART TYRE CONCEPT umbrella.

'We envisage that SENSING CORE will make a significant contribution to the evolution and further development of mobility in the coming autonomous driving society,' said Dr. Bernd Löwenhaupt, Managing Director Sumitomo Rubber Europe GmbH. 'We will not only utilize the data obtained by SENSING CORE, including road condition data, for vehicle control, but also pursue technological development with our eyes on the future integration of the data with societal information via cloud services.'

SRI's fleet trials of cloud-based TPMS with a rental company in Japan have already helped to demonstrate the efficiency, cost and safety value of tyre-based information. Another future application of SENSING CORE is in cloud-based tyre-wear monitoring. In this scenario, software in the cloud receives usage information from the vehicle and accurately predicts the resultant tyre wear. When a tyre is ready for replacement, an alert is sent to the driver or fleet manager.

Falken Tyre Europe

Falken Tyre Europe GmbH is the European affiliate of Japanese tyre manufacturer Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd. (SRI). With more than 40,000 employees, it is the fifth largest tyre manufacturer worldwide. Tyre production is distributed over 12 production facilities, with more than 116 million tyres sold per year. The Falken brand was established in Japan in 1983; in 1988 the first branch office was opened in Germany. From its location in Offenbach, Main, the company markets and sells a complete tyre portfolio for passenger cars, trucks, pick-ups and SUVs as original equipment and for the entire European retrofitting market. More than 220 people from 24 nations work for Falken Tyre Europe, and a distribution network of approx. 8,000 tyre partners across Europe handles the sale and fitting of its premium products. All Falken factories comply with the ISO 9001, IATF 16949 as well as environmental standard ISO14001.

For more information visit www.falkentyre.com

Photo credit: FALKEN Tyres
posted on conceptcarz.com

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